The Internet enables people to view webpages, exchange email, play videos and also conduct phone communications. In Internet-based phone communications, the phone audio phone data has a packet form which is suitable for transmission over the Internet. IP-enabled private branch exchanges (IP PBXes) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) endpoints typically encrypt these data packets passing through them to prevent anyone except the intended recipient from accessing the data packets.
Some companies record or monitor Internet-based phone calls for business purposes, and some companies use voice mail systems to store Internet-based phone messages. To accomplish this, packet sniffers are used to monitor, analyze, capture or access the data packets associated with these Internet-based phone calls. The known packet sniffers are installed at a centralized location such as, for example, at the network switch or router of a local area network. These packet sniffers require that the packets be decrypted before the phone data can be recorded, monitored or stored in voice mail systems. With the periodic changes in encryption techniques, and the fact that encryption key retrieval from the various phone systems is a non-standard operation that is sometimes not possible at all, it is difficult to develop a reliable decryption system for the packet sniffers. Therefore, there is a need to overcome the disadvantages described above or otherwise lessen the effects of such disadvantages.